An archive of Kevin O’Brien’s posts from the original WeaponsMan website he created in 2011.
Please excuse any typos and issues resulting from scraping the old site. Posts might be out of chronological order.
We’ve been troubled by the apparent increase in the number of brazen FFL robberies and burglaries lately, and started tracking them to see if we were just seeing more reporting, or just seeing more spectacular thefts that got more media coverage — or whether these crimes are really up. Well, ATF answered our question with …
How to separate the pistol’s potential from the pistolero’s: the Ransom Rest and a grip insert that fits the firearm. There are several ways to test fire a handgun, whether for function, for accuracy, or for any kind of instrumented testing, like chronograph load development or strain-gage pressure measurement. In ascending order, these are: by hand, from an …
This is something odd: we’re linking to one thread of a forum, the Canadian-based milsurps.eh (just kidding, milsurps.com), and what’s more, it’s one thread that only has one post. Why in the name of St. Gretzky would we do that? Well, it’s what a post it is! The post links to more than two dozen technical articles by …
Like the proud hammer owner who saw each problem as a nail, we tend to project our own tactical equipment, skills and training on to potential adversaries. Symmetry. But tactically, symmetry is a false pursuit. Some examples of symmetry as practiced in training and planning: Fighter pilots train extensively as if their primary mission is to fight …
…only outlaws will have trains. There’s a whole political movement lurking in this somewhere: A woman was talking to her boyfriend on a cell phone about committing suicide when she was hit by a train in Wyandotte and died this morning. The 25-year-old Wyandotte woman, who was hit by the train on the railroad tracks …
Here’s the telegraphic version, from PJ Media’s Bridget Johnson. It should answer some of your questions after Friday’s cruise-missile attack. A “background briefing” is one in which the reporters can use the information but not attribute it by name to the individuals providing it. (There’s often a generic “source” specified, like this report’s “NSC Officials.” For …
It’s been a while, and so it’s time for another Mess of Accidents, in which people go bang unintentionally, go bang in the wrong direction, in the wrong place, into the wrong person (indeed, anybody you shoot without having decided to use deadly force on that person is by definition the wrong person, or in any of a …
A friend of a friend of the blog FOIAd this information, which took him two requests. The first produced the Round One reliability testing, which downchecked 6 of the 10 submissions. During the first-round test and data analysis, the submissions were blinded by using a code letter ID from A through J. In the results …
We missed a one-day-only on these Polymer80 Glock frame kits for $39.99, but at $69.99 they’re still more than half off. Frame, metal guide rails insert, jig, and cutting tools all in one handy kit. Available in black, OD, or FDE. The only reason we didn’t buy any this time is that we still have …
You may have seen headlines lately about the Navy’s problem with pilots sucking air, or rather, oxygen, or rather rather (and here is the nub of the problem) lack of oxygen. This has been in the news lately because the Navy’s O2 delivery failures are so profound that men are coming to fear their jets. This spring, the plane …